This photo is one of the front-page rotation photos on Flickr. It’s a great shot, but every time I see it, I think, “Wow, that guy is SO hardcore — he’s swimming and taking a photo even while he’s got a harpoon sticking out of him!”
So why do I see Bob Balaban?
Five years ago….
This was the scene outside Casa Jaquandor five years ago today, after the Buffalo Niagara area got walloped by a lake-effect snow storm very early in the season. The next day was actually fairly warm, and melting started quickly; had this storm happened in November, it would barely be remembered. But this storm happened early enough in the fall that there were still leaves on most of the trees, which caused snow to pile on the branches; all that extra weight caused branches to snap. Thousands of trees were destroyed around here in this storm.
This also brought down many power lines, and thousands were without power for days, some for over a week. I remember working at The Store that morning…as none of our lot attendants were able to make it in, I worked the lot for half the day, and early on, most folks shopping were buying beer, chips, crackers, Cheetos, and that kind of thing — the Sabres had a game that night. I joked that the storm had given Buffalo a massive case of the munchies.
But after a few hours, as the magnitude of this event became clear, I noticed that folks were now buying lots of bread. Milk. Bottled water. Bags of ice. Canned foods.
We never lost power at Casa Jaquandor. Our lines are underground, and we almost never lose power — not even during the 2003 blackout that shut down almost everything east of the Mississippi. So for us, it was like we were spectators in the middle of a natural disaster.
But, as always, Buffalo’s response to snow is “Shovel it, shove it over there, and let’s get on with things.” (After a bit of initial panic, that is.)
Ahhhh, life in Buffalo!
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Random Stuff from the Week that Was
So, last week was my 40th birthday, as I noted at the time. Because of work schedules, we rarely celebrate birthdays on the dates on which they fall; instead we schedule some time off as near as we can, and celebrate then. It was a great week, though, it really was. Of course, it got off to the perfect start, with this happening:
And the week really did stay about that good! I worked a short work week before taking a five-day weekend (which includes today, so I’m back to work tomorrow), and I wasn’t unproductive during that work week, either. Then The Wife and I had a nice couple of days off together, during which we took a little trip, and as several people asked me on Facebook and in e-mail, there were pies.
But more on those in a bit…random thoughts and stuff first.
:: Autumnal weather has at last taken hold in Western New York…which, for me, means “time for overalls”. That’s just one of many reasons why this time of year is my favorite. Cool weather means overalls, and time off means naps!
Of course, naps are always welcome, but there’s something about naps in fall and winter that makes them so much better than naps in spring and summer. Sometimes naps in summer feel like wasted time. Of course, that’s just humans, I suppose. Cats never feel like napping is a waste of time. In fact, I wonder sometimes what the evolutionary benefit is to cats of getting all that sleep!
I also wonder where cats slept before the invention of the cardboard box.
:: Car repair places irritate me. We had to take The Wife’s van in for some work, and wouldn’t you know it, they found other stuff wrong that really needs to be fixed soon soon soon! We’ll get those things fixed, but not at that place, which is almost certainly overpriced. The only reason we went there is that we needed to get the tires rotated, which is free since that’s where we got the tires. We also had them check the oil and find out what the “Check Engine” light was all about, which is where it all started. Luckily it’s not super-pressing, so we can save up money and then get the fix done. But ye Gods, I hate the “Hey, we found some stuff on your car!” stuff.
But hey, at least we’re not this guy:
Ye Gods, indeed! This, folks, is why I maintain a state of deep suspicion of other people when I’m driving.
:: The Wife and I made our annual excursion to the Ithaca Apple Harvest Festival this weekend. We discovered this festival quite by chance in 2007, when we planned a getaway sans destination. All we knew was that we were going away, but we had no idea where. I did some Googling and found out about this Festival, and aside from 2008 (when The Wife journeyed to see her ailing mother), we’ve gone every year since. But Ithaca’s quite a long drive from Buffalo (two-point-five to three hours), so we always stay someplace in Rochester overnight and then take the remaining drive the next day. This year we stayed near the Eastview Mall, and we had dinner at PF Chang’s, where we’d never eaten before.
We loved the meal we had there. They have a nice “dinner for two” menu which made the meal more reasonable than we’d even expected, and the food we had was really quite good. No, it wasn’t as good as the best Chinese I’ve ever had — that honor goes to a dim sum place in Toronto, and the Shanghai Restaurant, also in Rochester (Henrietta, specifically) — but it was certainly better than the local takeout joints we like to frequent at Casa Jaquandor. I took some photos of our food, and I put them on Flickr, but…they’re not very good photos. Too dark, really. I was taking them with my phone, and I had the flash off as the phone flash is an LED that makes everything look slightly unnatural. Sometimes I like that effect, but not with food. Anyway, we shared an appetizer of crab-filled wontons (pretty much the same idea as any “crab rangoon” you’ll get anyplace else, although much better prepared), cups of hot-and-sour soup (again, same idea, but terrifically prepared), and then we split Kung Pao Shrimp and Orange Peel Chicken. It was a wonderful meal.
And the place was packed when we arrived, so we put our name on the list and then went to wander the mall for a bit. It’s been several years since I’ve walked a mall. I remember the Eastview Mall from when I was ten years old — the place has been there for many moons — but it has more than doubled in size since then, and now it is positively massive, with several wings added since then that are actually larger than the one wing that used to comprise the entire mall. Lots of folks think that malls are dead, but they’re not; they seem to be accreting, though, so an area with a bunch of small malls eventually becomes an area with one big mall.
Oh, and for ten bucks I got a set of Star Wars cookie cutters at Williams-Sonoma. Score!
:: The next morning we departed Rochester (OK, Victor) for Ithaca. Someday I want to have more than just a single overnight trip for this journey, because really, I just love that part of New York State. It actually starts right in my own town, with the start of Route 20A, which is my favorite drive anywhere. It’s just a gorgeous drive, through the hill country that rests about ten to twenty miles south of the flat I-90 corridor. Sure, since we were going to Rochester I could have saved at least half an hour by taking the Thruway, but why do that? The Thruway has zero personality…and to drive it, you have to pay tolls. Ugh.
After spending the night in Victor (a southeastern suburb of Rochester), we drove the next day first through Pittsford and some of Rochester’s eastern suburbs and then farther east, through towns like Phelps, Palmyra, Waterloo, and Seneca Falls. I always love driving through these towns, with their central business districts lined with brick buildings, occasional crossings of the Erie Canal, and out in the country between towns, driving past farms and properties where the houses often look like they were built before the Civil War. Undoubtedly, some of them were. There’s a real sense of driving through history, I find, in those old towns. Waterloo bills itself as the birthplace of Memorial Day. Seneca Falls played a role in the women’s suffrage movement. And Joseph Smith originally hailed from Palmyra…which means that in the space of less than fifty miles, we drove through the birthplaces of Memorial Day, womens’ rights, and the Mormon church!
And then there’s the drive south to Ithaca itself. Because of the presence of the Finger Lakes, each one running north-to-south, between Buffalo and Ithaca, there is no ‘straight line’ route available. You either drive south, and then east; or you go east, and then south. We always do the latter, so we can drive along the shores of Cayuga Lake. The Finger Lakes are just stunningly gorgeous, all year. I adore that whole region…and at last, it was into Ithaca for the Apple Harvest Festival, huzzah!
:: On our previous trips to the AppleFest, each time it’s been a gorgeous, bright, crisp, sunny Fall day. This time…not so much.
Yeah. Brrrr. Luckily I wisely dressed in layers.
Cold, rainy, and dingy.
As usual, there was a pilgrimage to Autumn Leaves Books, with their nice stock of F&SF. I could spend an hour here, easily. Autumn Leaves is not your “typical” used bookstore, with dim lights and stacks of books teetering everywhere; this store is bright, spacious, and organized. This time I wrote out a list of books that I wanted to look for — mostly space operas, of course — and I actually found one. I also bought an SF book by LE Modessit Jr — I’ve never read him before — and a fantasy trilogy by an author I’d never heard of before at all. Why not?
It wasn’t all bookstores for me, though…we looked up a knitting/crocheting store for The Wife, and she loved the place. She’s developed a real love of crocheting over the last couple of years, and she’s always on the lookout for good places to buy supplies. She liked the selection, the bright organization (some yarn stores can be dark and depressing, she says), and the pair of women who worked there were very gregarious and helpful. Of course, I know next to nothing about yarn, so while she was looking at stuff…
…I was taking photos of myself in the mirror and of cool-looking yarn.
Eventually we warmed up with some hot cider…
…and had a lunch of waffles and fried chicken. Now, I had expressed some skepticism of this food combo when I first encountered it, but I must admit…it’s a terrific match! Loved it. Next year we’re getting two of ’em. There’s this wonderful little restaurant in the middle of the Downtown Commons in Ithaca that features waffles in what must be dozens of permutations.
Finally, after touring all of the craft tents (where we bought The Daughter a bracelet and where I bought The Wife a necklace-and-earrings set), we decided that it was time to start heading home. And it was a good time for that, too, because this is what the weather turned out like an hour or so later:
On the way home we stopped for dinner at a joint in Avon, NY called Tom Wahl’s, which is a burgers-and-dogs drive in…but the burgers were really very good and their onion rings are fantastic. It’s a chain in the Rochester area, and their root beer is awesome.
:: And finally, there was my favorite part of the week: the coconut cream pies. Four of ’em, thick and gooey and creamy. Mmmmm, pie….
Then to blow out the candles…
…and, finally, splat!
Here’s the video I made of this pieing.
Yeah, I know, it’s weird. So what? It’s also fun. Life is just too short to take oneself seriously all the time. Maybe I’ll get five pies in my face when turn fifty! A pie in the face isn’t exactly a birthday tradition for me — we do it once or twice a year whenever, depending on opportunity — but maybe it will be now. Pies in the face rule.
So, to recap: the Bills beat the Patriots; I get to wear overalls again (which, I might add, are all fitting better since I’ve been losing weight!); an overnight trip with my wonderful wife through the finest parts of New York; used bookstores; yarn stores; new jewelry for the ladies in my life; dinner at PF Chang’s; Star Wars cookie-cutters; waffles and fried chicken; burgers and onion rings at Tom Wahl’s; and I get hit in the face with four coconut cream pies.
That’s a great week, folks.
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The time for all things must pass into memory….
Three things I can’t much use anymore.
I got a lot of years out of that CD player, and it just might still play — I’m not sure, I haven’t used it in a long time. I used to carry it on walks a lot or at the Y during my cardio workouts, but for obvious reasons I wasn’t able to use it during weight training, which is why I got an MP3 player, which I can slip into the pocket of my gym shorts and thus keep on listening to music whilst working out.
And then there’s my old cell phone. This actually isn’t my first cell phone; that honor went to an Audiovox phone I had for a couple of years back around 1999 and 2000. I’m not even sure that phone is still around…but anyway, the Motorola Razr pictured here was my phone from 2007 to, oh, 2010 or so, when we decided to upgrade, which is the phone I still use. (And which, by the way, is a fine MP3 player in itself, so now I don’t even use my original MP3 player all that much!)
Finally…there’s my Borders Rewards card. Oh well. This card saved me quite a bit of money on books at Borders over the years. Now it’ll be a nice, retro bookmark, or I’ll use it as a scraper for wood putty. I’ll never be able to buy books with it, though.
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Cool air arrives, HUZZAH!!!
August was typically wonderful, as August usually is; it’s by far my favorite of the summer months, being packed with our favorite summer activities and also generally less hot and less humid than July. But even so, I am always grateful when September finally rolls round, because that’s when things usually start cooling off a bit more.
Of course, this particular September started off with some abnormally hot weather, but that’s OK, since it was a matter of time before it broke, and break it did with today’s high temperatures only in the 60s. Which means, after several months in shorts, overalls weather has returned! Let there be dancing in the streets and wearing of the bibs!!
(Yeah, I’m odd. Bite me.)
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Dispatches from the Fair
A few weeks ago, The Family Unit and I made our annual trek to the Erie County Fair, where the usual good time was had by all. (Except for that one guy, who didn’t seem to be having a good time at all. Oh well!) Here’s some pictorial documentation of our day!
(Below the fold, of course.)
Let’s talk fair food first, get it out of the way. Our first order of business at the Fair is always lunch, which means one thing: finding the corn dog place. The corn dog place we usually like has been moved from its usual spot, so we tried another.
This one was OK, but it didn’t really hit the Corn Dog Sweet Spot, as it were, so we found another place, where the corn dogs are made with Sahlen’s dogs, and they are hand-dipped and fried to order. This is corn dog freshness!
(By the way, God knows that I will make fun of Republicans for just about any reason, but I will not make fun of their corn dog consumption methods. So go ahead, Governor Perry and Congresslunatic Bachmann, deep-throat those corn dogs to your hearts’ contents!)
At dinner, The Daughter insists on pizza.
I think she does that so she can eat her pizza, and then nag The Wife and I for bites from our Chiavetta’s chicken dinners.
I wish the Chiavetta’s people would serve the butter at least a little softened; I think they keep it frozen up until the moment they plunk it on your plate. But oh well.
I didn’t do a whole lot of Fud Photography, since a lot of what we ate was the same as what we eat every year: roasted nuts, kettle corn, a big selection of jerky, fried dough, ice cream, milk shakes, et cetera. There was something new that we tried, an arepa, which was basically a grilled-cheese sandwich made on cornbread. The cornbread was really moist and had nice, big corn kernels in it. The thing looked fantastic:
Flavor-wise, though, I was a bit disappointed — it was awfully bland as served. They used mozzarella cheese, which was really mild; a spicier cheese, or some kind of spicy meat or vegetable, would have helped a lot. I had to put a liberal amount of hot sauce on the thing to really make it taste good. I love the idea, but it needs reworking before next year if I’m to have one again. (Oh, and those things hold heat like few foods I’ve ever known. The thing was too hot to bite without searing pain for almost five minutes!)
By way of walking around seeing stuff, we love the Creative Arts exhibits, as usual — and they are in a different spot now, which is actually quite nice. There were wonderful quilts…
…and needlepoint nudes…
…and creative diaramas.
And there were animals, as always! Llamas…
…and chickens…
…and horses on parade.
There was a guy rolling around on a wacky wheel, calling himself the Wacky Wheeler.
We stopped in the Antique Mall, a smaller version of one of our favorite local retail establishments, the Orchard Park Antique Mall. Ever since the Fair, I have been kicking myself for not buying this:
No, I don’t like the Alien movies, but that little guy is just so many kinds of awesome! I’ll keep an eye out for him at the main Mall now that the Fair has ended.
Then, to the Midway for rides and whatnot, as the moon rose.
There’s a ride that apparently has a “spaceship” theme, hence the presence of Darth Vader on its side!
And this amused me greatly. One of my favorite rides to watch is “Enterprise”, which is a Star Trek themed ride that can’t call itself a Star Trek ride — it just always has Star Trek artwork. Here’s the ride in years gone by:
Note Kirk’s enormous chin! And either they’ve omitted McCoy and put Scotty up there, or they’ve put McCoy in the wrong color shirt.
Well, now that Trek has been rebooted, it’s time to reboot the “Enterprise” ride, too! Here’s how it looks now:
You’ve got Chris Pine as Kirk, and I suppose that’s Zachary Quinto as spock, way over on the left. Spock is right next to…wait a minute! That’s Padme as she looked at the end of the Battle of Geonosis in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones! And…the Alien from Alien, hanging there! And what’s with the pair of cat’s eyes hovering over the Earth? Now there’s some gonzo stuff, right there. God, I love that ride. If only I wasn’t sure that the act of riding it would make me hurl.
Our day at The Fair wasn’t totally inclusive of everything we wanted to do. When we were walking the animal barns, the sheep and the cattle were closed, because their respective judging shows were going on right then, so we missed out, unfortunately. I continue to hope each year for a cold front to come through and make the day we go to the Fair cool enough to wear overalls — if ever an event screams out for overalls, it’s the Fair — but no, it was its usual “pleasantly hot”. And The Daughter had gone in, hoping to purchase a hermit crab from a dealer who had been there in years past. No dice this time, unfortunately. No hermit crab…that day. But that’s a post for another time.
See you next year, County Fair!
(My complete Fair photo set is here.)
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Yes, well, aside from THAT, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?
I apologize in advance….
Page One: The Lord of the Rings
I started “Page One” with The Hobbit, so here is page one of The Lord of the Rings. I love how the books open with contrasting chapter titles.